A Toolbox for Humanity


Book Description

Compiled and arranged by Lloyd Albert Johnson, A Toolbox for Humanity is a review of human thoughts and ideas. This volume presents the thoughts and quotations of others. These thoughts reach out to those who think about human tragedies and blessings. Our ancestors took their turn at life. It is our turn to imagine ourselves, all those to come, and what it is we share.




The Theory Toolbox


Book Description

This text involves students in understanding and using the "tools" of critical social and literary theory from the first day of class. It is an ideal first introduction before students encounter more difficult readings from critical and postmodern perspectives. Nealon and Searls Giroux describe key concepts and illuminate each with an engaging inquiry that asks students to consider deeper and deeper questions. Written in students' own idiom, and drawing its examples from the social world, literature, popular culture, and advertising, The Theory Toolbox offers students the language and opportunity to theorize rather than positioning them to respond to theory as a reified history of various schools of thought. Clear and engaging, it avoids facile description, inviting students to struggle with ideas and the world by virtue of the book's relentless challenge to common assumptions and its appeal to common sense. Updated throughout, the second edition of The Theory Toolbox includes a discussion of new media, as well as two new chapters on life and nature.




The Conflict Resolution Toolbox


Book Description

In real-life conflict resolution situations, one size does not fit all. Just as a mechanic does not fix every car with the same tool, the conflict resolution practitioner cannot hope to resolve every dispute using the same technique. Practitioners need to be comfortable with a wide variety of tools to diagnose different problems, in vastly different circumstances, with different people, and resolve these conflicts effectively. The Conflict Resolution Toolbox gives you all the tools you need: eight different models for dealing with the many conflict situations you encounter in your practice. This book bridges the gap between theory and practice and goes beyond just one single model to present a complete toolbox - a range of models that can be used to analyze, diagnose, and resolve conflict in any situation. It shows mediators, negotiators, managers, and anyone needing to resolve conflict how to simply and effectively understand and assess the situations of conflict they face. And it goes a step further, offering specific, practical guidance on how to intervene to resolve the conflict successfully. Each model provides a different and potentially useful angle on the problem, and includes worksheets and a step-by-step process to guide the reader in applying the tools. Offers eight models to help you understand the root causes of any conflict. Explains each model's focus, what kind of situations it can be useful in and, most importantly, what interventions are likely to help. Provides you with clear direction on what specific actions to choose to resolve a particular type of conflict effectively. Features a detailed case study throughout the book, to which each model is applied. Additional examples and case studies unique to each chapter give the reader a further chance to see the models in action. Includes practical tools and worksheets that you can use in working with these models in your practice. The Conflict Resolution Toolbox equips any practitioner to resolve a wide range of conflicts. Mediators, negotiators, lawyers, managers and supervisors, insurance adjusters, social workers, human resource and labour relations specialists, and others will have all the tools they need for successful conflict resolution.




Human-Machine Shared Contexts


Book Description

Human-Machine Shared Contexts considers the foundations, metrics, and applications of human-machine systems. Editors and authors debate whether machines, humans, and systems should speak only to each other, only to humans, or to both and how. The book establishes the meaning and operation of "shared contexts between humans and machines; it also explores how human-machine systems affect targeted audiences (researchers, machines, robots, users) and society, as well as future ecosystems composed of humans and machines. This book explores how user interventions may improve the context for autonomous machines operating in unfamiliar environments or when experiencing unanticipated events; how autonomous machines can be taught to explain contexts by reasoning, inferences, or causality, and decisions to humans relying on intuition; and for mutual context, how these machines may interdependently affect human awareness, teams and society, and how these "machines" may be affected in turn. In short, can context be mutually constructed and shared between machines and humans? The editors are interested in whether shared context follows when machines begin to think, or, like humans, develop subjective states that allow them to monitor and report on their interpretations of reality, forcing scientists to rethink the general model of human social behavior. If dependence on machine learning continues or grows, the public will also be interested in what happens to context shared by users, teams of humans and machines, or society when these machines malfunction. As scientists and engineers "think through this change in human terms," the ultimate goal is for AI to advance the performance of autonomous machines and teams of humans and machines for the betterment of society wherever these machines interact with humans or other machines. This book will be essential reading for professional, industrial, and military computer scientists and engineers; machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) scientists and engineers, especially those engaged in research on autonomy, computational context, and human-machine shared contexts; advanced robotics scientists and engineers; scientists working with or interested in data issues for autonomous systems such as with the use of scarce data for training and operations with and without user interventions; social psychologists, scientists and physical research scientists pursuing models of shared context; modelers of the internet of things (IOT); systems of systems scientists and engineers and economists; scientists and engineers working with agent-based models (ABMs); policy specialists concerned with the impact of AI and ML on society and civilization; network scientists and engineers; applied mathematicians (e.g., holon theory, information theory); computational linguists; and blockchain scientists and engineers. - Discusses the foundations, metrics, and applications of human-machine systems - Considers advances and challenges in the performance of autonomous machines and teams of humans - Debates theoretical human-machine ecosystem models and what happens when machines malfunction




The Toolbox Dialogue Initiative


Book Description

Cross-disciplinary scientific collaboration is emerging as standard operating procedure for many scholarly research enterprises. And yet, the skill set needed for effective collaboration is neither taught nor mentored. The goal of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative is to facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration. This book, inspired by this initiative, presents dialogue-based methods designed to increase mutual understanding among collaborators so as to enhance the quality and productivity of cross-disciplinary collaboration. It provides a theoretical context, principal activities, and evidence for effectiveness that will assist readers in honing their collaborative skills. Key Features Introduces the Toolbox Dialogue method for improving cross-disciplinary collaboration Reviews the theoretical background of cross-disciplinary collaboration and considers the communication and integration challenges associated with such collaboration Presents methods employed in workshop development and implementation Uses various means to examine the effectiveness of team-building exercises Related Titles Fam, D., J. Palmer, C. Riedy, and C. Mitchell. Transdisciplinary Research and Practice for Sustainability Outcomes (ISBN: 978-1-138-62573-0) Holland, D. Integrating Knowledge through Interdisciplinary Research: Problems of Theory and Practice (ISBN: 978-1-138-91941-9) Padmanabhan, M. Transdisciplinary Research and Sustainability: Collaboration, Innovation and Transformation (ISBN: 978-1-138-21640-2)




Beautiful Trouble


Book Description

Banksy, the Yes Men, Gandhi, Starhawk: the accumulated wisdom of decades of creative protest is now in the hands of the next generation of change-makers, thanks to Beautiful Trouble. Sophisticated enough for veteran activists, accessible enough for newbies, this compact pocket edition of the bestselling Beautiful Trouble is a book that’s both handy and inexpensive. Showcasing the synergies between artistic imagination and shrewd political strategy, this generously illustrated volume can easily be slipped into your pocket as you head out to the streets. This is for everyone who longs for a more beautiful, more just, more livable world – and wants to know how to get there. Includes a new introduction by the editors. Contributors include: Celia Alario • Andy Bichlbaum • Nadine Bloch • L. M. Bogad • Mike Bonnano • Andrew Boyd • Kevin Buckland • Doyle Canning • Samantha Corbin • Stephen Duncombe • Simon Enoch • Janice Fine • Lisa Fithian • Arun Gupta • Sarah Jaffe • John Jordan • Stephen Lerner • Zack Malitz • Nancy L. Mancias • Dave Oswald Mitchell • Tracey Mitchell • Mark Read • Patrick Reinsborough • Joshua Kahn Russell • Nathan Schneider • John Sellers • Matthew Skomarovsky • Jonathan Matthew Smucker • Starhawk • Eric Stoner • Harsha Walia




A Pastor's Toolbox


Book Description

Today’s parish leaders are expected to be holy and prayerful spiritual guides, great preachers and compassionate confessors, but also to make important decisions in key areas like finance, budgeting, hiring and firing, fundraising, risk management, relationship-building, and more—often with virtually no transition or training. And with all the requisite education in philosophy and theology they must provide future pastors, in addition to formation in priestly spirituality and pastoral care, seminaries can do little to prepare priests to deal with the difficult temporal issues pastors face. A Pastor’s Toolbox is designed to help fill that void. It is loaded with valuable information, insights, and practical tools that pastors need in order to begin handling the complexities of parish management in the twenty-first century.The book is an outgrowth of The Toolbox for Pastoral Management, a nationally recognized joint project of The National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management and Seton Hall University. The Leadership Roundtable is a nonprofit organization of Catholic lay leaders, religious, and clergy working together to promote excellence and best practices in the management, finances, communications, and human resources development of the Catholic Church in the U.S. through the greater incorporation of the expertise of the laity. Learn more at www.TheLeadershipRoundtable.org.




A Toolbox for Our Daughters


Book Description

A new, concise edition of the best-selling guide to transforming sexuality and orgasm through sacred ritual and ancient techniques. This book opens the way to a new stage of fulfillment and bliss, making the sacred lovemaking techniques of the East available to Western readers and extending sensual experience for everyone.This highly illustrated book on human sexuality provides simple techniques that help readers to discover a new sexual experience, in which physical pleasure combines with an intense emotional and spiritual joy. Margot Anand teaches a wide range of measures that enhance sexual pleasure and deepen intimacy, including massage, visualization, breathing, ritual, movement and fantasy.




Modelling the Physiological Human


Book Description

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Second 3D Physiological Human Workshop, 3DPH 2009, held in Zermatt, Switzerland, in November/December 2009. The 19 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on Segmentation, Anatomical and Physiological Modelling, Simulation Models, Motion Analysis, Medical Visualization and Interaction, as well as Medical Ontology.




The Fire Chief's Toolbox


Book Description

This is not another book about how to put the wet stuff on the red stuff. The Fire Chief's Tool Box presents a clear view of the personal and professional issues affecting a new fire chief and offers tools to address the issues successfully. The Fire Chief's Tool Box will provide readers with: - Realistic insight into the knowledge, skills and abilities that every fire chief must have to succeed. - Guidelines for long-term career preparation. - An understanding of the job search and selection process. - A fundamental plan for assuming command. - An understanding of the importance of the chief's role as a politician, educator, salesperson and marketer to assure career success. - Guidance for spouses and families of those who seek to become The Chief. - A reminder that the primary job of every fire chief is the safety of his or her personnel. As a future or current chief of any fire department, you will: - Benefit from the practical, straightforward and common sense advice. - Discover the thought processes needed to meet the challenges that face every chief. - Gain insight that will help your family cope with the stresses your job as fire chief will bring to their lives.